Times Up
by LoveWritingStories
Summary: Something dark and unknown is lurking in Amity Park; stealing its children away. Closing your curtains won't keep it from looking, locking your doors won't keep it out, and hiding your children won't keep them safe. It is up to Danny to figure out what's happening and save the town, although he's on a clock, a clock that may just run out.
1. Prologue

**Disclamier: I do not own Danny Phantom**

**Hello everybody.**

**I have been working on this story for months, h****ours were spent painfully editing and listening to creepy music. S****o I really hope you enjoy this chapter.**

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Rain pattered softly on the roof of Casper High as Danny Fenton ventured through its abandoned hallways. It had been about an hour since the bell had rung, signaling the end of a long week and the beginning of a three day weekend. The only sound was the humming of florescent lights, the gentle shower of water against the school, and Danny's echoing footsteps.

A light flickered at the end of the hallway as Danny reached his locker, giving off a creepy vibe. He had been pulled away from his last period class after his ghost sense went off, and he had spent the last two hours searching the town in vain. This confused Danny. He hadn't seen any ghosts in Amity for the past month, but his ghost sense had gone off five times that week alone. So there he was, opening his locker an hour after school had ended on a Friday afternoon, wondering where all the ghosts had gone.

Danny knew that being home late would get him in trouble, especially with what was going on lately. Eight children and teens from Amity Park and surrounding areas had gone missing in the past three weeks. They were all aged 4-13. His parents had been ultra protective of both Danny and Jazz since the second disappearance. In a way, he guessed he understood. Aside from a ghost attack every other day, Amity Park was one of the safest towns in the USA, with a crime rate of almost nothing. Having children going missing in a place like that, or anywhere even, is shocking. The worst part was that the police couldn't find a pattern in the victims nor the circumstances of their disappearances.

Danny rubbed at his eyes and let out a yawn. He had wanted to stay home from school that day after getting no sleep. His lack of rest was for two reasons. First, he had spent a huge chunk of the rainy night searching the surrounding wilderness and lake for the missing children, which turned up nothing. Second, when he got home, something in the house felt wrong and he couldn't get to sleep. Danny couldn't put his finger on _why_ it had felt wrong, but it had reminded him of when he was a kid and he left his bedroom at night and all the shadows in the dark looked like monsters.

Back in the present, Danny heard a noise. It was faint and far off, but it was there; it sounded like footsteps. For a moment he ignored it, choosing to write it off as a teacher or a janitor, but after a minute he realized how unlikely that was. Danny had seen the janitor leaving the school, probably for a smoke break, as he himself had entered. That meant the man wouldn't return for another ten minutes, minimum. It was also a long weekend; all of the teachers had already left.

Danny froze. The footsteps were louder now, and then there was another, different sound that he couldn't quite decipher. Something was wrong; footsteps shouldn't cause so much fear, right? They were just a sound, just a sound echoing throughout an empty school during the middle of a thunderstorm while the town was rife with danger. Danny stood at his locker as the sound became louder. His heart skipped a beat and his breath stopped. He could hear whoever, whatever, it was, around the corner. He felt like it was coming for _him_.

The footsteps didn't stop; they just kept getting louder. Danny turned his head and watched, still frozen in place. It didn't even cross his mind that he had ghost powers. No, he was paralyzed with fear, although he couldn't tell what was wrong. Then he heard it, one of the eeriest sounds he had ever heard; humming. It was a girl humming.

She walked around the corner into Danny's sight. Paulina. He watched as the Hispanic girl made her way down the hallway, humming that eerie tune. It was like Deja vu, the song was so close to his memory, although he couldn't place it. Something about that chorus terrified him. What was worse, Paulina didn't even notice him. Not like her normal 'seeing right through him' cliché, it was more like, she didn't see anything at all. She just hummed and walked, as if in a trance. She didn't stop until she bumped into the frozen boy.

Suddenly, Paulina was awake and alert. "Watch where you're going, Fenton," she spat, and resumed humming quietly.

Danny's shoulders relaxed minimally. It was Paulina, just Paulina. He turned his gaze over to the corner that she'd come from, somehow knowing there was still something there, but he pointedly chose to ignore it. With a shiver, he turned his attention back to the very unhappy girl in front of him.

"Hey, _you_ bumped into _me_," he informed her, as nicely as he could. No point in trying to pass up a chance at getting a date. Paulina stayed silent for a second, as if she was trying to recollect if it had really been her who'd initiated their contact. "What are you doing here?" Danny asked, as he checked where she had come from once again. Was that a shadow? No, couldn't have been. It was gone, anyways. He had imagined it…

"I'm here for school, duh," Paulina snapped, drawing Danny's attention. She was still humming that creepy song.

"Paulina, school ended an hour ago," he told her, only half paying attention as he kept his eyes on that corner. "And can you stop with the humming?!" The song was creeping him out more and more every second. As if being in an abandoned hallway with a flickering light as rained poured outside wasn't bad enough.

Paulina glared at him. "Haha, very funny. Also, I'm not humming, jackass," she scoffed, but took out her phone to check the time anyway. "Huh," Paulina whispered. "But I was just in the bathroom…"

Danny knew better than to think she was talking to him. It sounded more as if she were talking to herself, trying to figure out what was going on. And that damn humming, too, she wouldn't stop.

Once again, Danny's attention was drawn to the corner. Was it darker? He felt something there, something just out of his grasp, something malevolent, sinister. Suddenly, a clap of thunder struck; a second later, the lights began to flicker even more rapidly as the storm picked up outside. They came on one last time before going out completely.

The darkness seemed to last for hours rather than a few seconds, and Danny swore he felt something brush against his skin. "Paulina?" he asked, assuming it was her. As if on cue, the lights flicked back on, revealing him to be alone in the deserted hallway. Paulina was gone, and so was the feeling of wariness that had been following him throughout the hallways. "Paulina?!" he called out, with no reply. Quickly, Danny gathered up his belongings, shoved them into his backpack, and ran. Whatever had just happened, he wanted nothing to do with it.

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**Normally I'd ask you to tell me if I should continue this, but I love this story so I'll be doing it anyways. But still tell me is you enjoyed it or not! As always, if you see any spelling for grammar mistakes that me or my lovely beta readers missed, please let me know and I will fix them as soon as possible. Review, follow and favorite, there will be more to come! Eventually. **


	2. So It Begins

**Hello hello and welcome back, sorry it's taken so long to update, but I hope that this will be worth the wait.**

** Next chapter is where things really start kicking off.**

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Day 1

Danny arrived at his house almost a half hour later, the walk had been long to say the least. Of course, the pouring rain, which only seemed to become heavier, most likely had played a part in that. Surprisingly, when Danny walked through the front door, the house before him was dark and empty. "Hello?" he called, to which there was no reply. "Jazz? Mom? Dad?" Nothing. With a shrug, Danny took off his wet outer clothing and hung it on the hook by the door.. He moved through the house just as he heard thunder outside, he closed his eyes. Thunder meant lightening, and Danny was not found of lightning. Standing in the darkness with the sound of a thunderstorm on the horizon gave him the chills. For some reason, he still felt as if there were eyes on him. Shrugging it off, the boy walked towards the kitchen and flicked on the light. As if on que, the phone rang. Rushing over, Danny picked up the landline. "Hello?" he answered.

"HI Danny!" it was his mother, but her voice was choppy and static-y.

"Hey mom," he began, "where are you?"

The line was silent for a moment, Danny was just about to ask if she was still there, when she spoke again, this time however, the choppiness was worse. "He-o Dan-ny?"

"Yeah Im here."

"Your fath- and I are out look- for the missi- kids. Mrs. Preic- daugh- went mis-sing thi- orning," Mrs. Preicle was the lady who lived down the street with her seven year old daughter Abby, if she was missing... "We- back so-on. Jaz- be home soon. Feel free to - friends over. See y-" the line went dead.

"Hello?" no reply. "Mom?" Danny let out a breath, the storm must be really bad where she was, which meant that is was only going to get worse, but surely it couldn't last forever. He reached for his cellphone and dialed a familiar number. Suddenly, Danny spun around, almost dropping the phone. He peered into a dark corner of the kitchen, his heart thumped as he expected felt another presence in the room. The corner was empty.

"Hello?" Tucker's voice echoed over the phone.

He could have sworn he felt something reaching for him.

"Hello?" Tucker asked again, sounding worried

He had felt icy breath on his neck...

"Danny? Danny are you okay?" he sounded like he was in a full blown panic.

He spun around, only to find that he was indeed alone, he backed against a wall, breath quickening. Was the room darker? It was definitely colder.

"Danny!" Tucker yelled, obviously expecting the worse. "Are. You. Okay?!"

"What?" Danny asked, turning his attention to his phone, "uh..." he stared into the shadowed corner of the kitchen once again. "Sorry, got distracted," he turned away, feeling unsettled.. "Wanna stay over?"

"Hold on a sec," Tucker was silent but the sounds Danny heard explained enough. There was fabric rustling, followed by the creaking of Tucker's bed, followed by the floor and finally what must have been his bedroom door. Muffled, he heard "Mom can I go to Danny's?!" there was another voice, but he couldn't make out what was being said. "Its pouring rain so yeah I ride would be lovely!" More muffled voices. "K thanks! I'll be down in a minute!"

"So?" Danny asked, already knowing the answer.

"Be there in ten. You calling Sam?" Tucker responded.

"Yeah."

"Kay. See you soon."

They hung up. Danny wandered towards the fridge as he dialed Sam's phone number. Lucky him, when his crush answered, he had a huge piece of pineapple shoved in his mouth.

"Hey Danny," she said with what sounded like a groan.

Quickly, he swallowed the food in his mouth and winced as too large pieces moved down his throat. "Hey Sam. Wanna come over?"

That time she did groan. "No can do. My parents are on lockdown after all the missing kids, I mean it wasn't so bad when it was just little ones. Well not, like, not bad, but not bad for me"

"Yeah I get it, its cool," Danny said, "but I thought that it had only been little kids? I mean a girl down my street apparently just went missing... I should really be out helping look for them."

Sam didn't skip a beat "Don't. Danny please don't go looking for them. I know you want to be a hero and save them, but it's stormy and it's dangerous, we don't know anything, please just leave this one to the police okay? And that's me asking, we both know I'd normally be all over this. Besides we don't even know if she was taken, everybody thinks she just ran away."

"What? Who?" he asked, he hadn't heard anything about somebody running away.

"Star. She was supposed to be picked up at lunch yesterday, but never made it to the car. Nobody has seen her since."

Danny thought about it, he guessed she had been right, Star hadn't shown up at school that day, he had passed it off as nothing. The fact he hadn't heard about it was weird though.

"You really didn't know?" Sam asked. "It was the talk f the school today. I mean, the police won't talk about it, neither will the teachers. I think they're all just hoping that if they ignore her disappearance, it;ll turn out that she did run away. Change of victimology I guess, they can afford to ignore it."

Victimology? Somebody had been watching too much Criminal Minds.

Danny thought about Paulina, she hadn't seemed all that broken up over her best friend missing. "No I hadn't heard. It's been kind of crazy lately. My ghost sense keeps going off, but I can never find any ghosts, so I wasn't In school much today."

"Yeah, I noticed," Sam sighed. "It's weird." She paused before changing the topic. "But seriously, its creepy stuff. I heard Dash and Kwan talking about it. Star had been acting weird for the past couple days. Apparently she'd been skipping and showing u plate the cheer practice but swearing she was on time. And the said that she wouldn't stop humming this creepy song. The two actually looked freaked out by it. I mean, its sad that she's missing and all and I hope she's okay but it honestly isn't much of a lose. Its just super weird, And it make it worse, people are saying Paulina has been doing the exact same thing. Weird right?"

He froze, Paulina had been. But surely the two weren't related, probably just some new party drug or something. Nobody would dare take Paulina Sanchez. Not when her dad is one of the wealthiest people in the country and owned a private security company, along with several laboratories around the world. Even for ransom, nobody would be that stupid. Danny shook his head. "Yeah weird." There was no point in raking his mind over somebody who probably wasn't even missing, He had just seen Paulina, nevermind that she disappeared mid conversation, if you could really call it that. People don't just disappear. Suddenly, the front door slammed shut, causing Danny to jump.

"Uh, gotta go Sam," without waiting for a response, he hung up. "Hello?" he called, voice cracking. He had heard that right? He wasn't just imagining it? He heart bounded so loud he was sure he could hear it. Why was he even so freaked out? Damn, he really had to stop acting like a person from a cheesy horror movie. After all this was real life. with real missing children and a real thunderstorm outside, definitely not a cheesy horror movie, and even if for some unknown reason it was, _ghost powers_.

"Danny get your stuff off the floor and hang it up!" Jazz called.

Puzzled, Danny walked towards the front door, he would've sworn that he had hung up his coat, but it had been thrown carelessly into a pile with his backpack and shoes.

"Danny?" Jazz asked, calling his attention after from his confusion. "Did mom call you?"

He nodded as he picked up his coat and hung it up once more. "It was really choppy though, I didn't really catch was she said, kinda just got the gist of it."

Jazz nodded, "Yeah, the storms getting pretty bad. The Weather says it gonna rain for the rest of the weekend. She texted me earlier and said that her and Dad probably weren't going to come home this weekend, they're going to stay in a motel and help search." Danny nodded, replaying in his mind every horror movie he had seen. Suddenly, lightning flashed, causing him to flinch, only a few seconds later came a roar of thunder.

"Well, won't this be a lovely weekend."

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**So fun fact, I never actually sent this to a beta reader, please if you see any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, let me know so I can fix them asap. **

**What happened to Star? What about Paulina? Who's taking the children? What's up with Danny and his ghost sense? **

**Stay tuned for more, hopefully coming soon.**


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